1. Field of the Invention
The present invention pertains to printed circuits, and more particularly, pertains to an indexing mechanism for a loading system for loading of test pins into a test fixture for testing of printed circuit boards.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The prior art test plates for testing of printed circuit boards have required manual or numerical control loading of test pins into fixtures, which has been a very time consuming manual or automated process requiring considerable dexterity or programming time. The number of hours required for loading of test pins into a test fixture has been forever-encompassing, requiring an excesive number of hours depending upon the complexity of the printed circuit board to be tested, usually requiring hours of man/woman labor for test pin loading. The state of the art has provided for robotic/numeric control loading of test pins, but this has always been cumbersome and manually performed or engineered by male or female labor, which has been labor intensive. Especially in the engineering programming areas.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a loading and unloading system incorporating gravity free fall of each of the test pins once a master pin grid array system has been preloaded, providing for subsequent loading and unloading of test plates for printed circuit boards.